OpenDaylight is an open source software-defined networking project committed to furthering adoption of SDN and accelerating innovation in a vendor-neutral and open environment.

The Linux Foundation has announced the OpenDaylight Project, whose mission, according to the website, is "to facilitate a community-led, industry-supported open source framework, including code and architecture, to accelerate and advance a common, robust software-defined networking platform."

According to the project’s technical overview, software-defined networking (SDN)“separates the control plane from the data plane within the network, allowing the intelligence and state of the network to be managed centrally while abstracting the complexity of the underlying physical network.” It lets users program network layers to optimize resources, increase network agility, and configure dynamic virtual networks that can adapt to application requirements.

Founding members of the OpenDaylight project, which include Big Switch Networks, Brocade, Cisco, Citrix, Ericsson, IBM, Juniper Networks, Microsoft, NEC, Red Hat, and VMware, will donate software and engineering resources for the framework. According to the announcement, OpenDaylight is the largest SDN open source project to date.

The first code from the OpenDaylight Project is expected to be released in Q3 2013 – current projects include an open controller, a virtual overlay network, protocol plugins, and switch device enhancements. OpenDaylight, which is licensed under the Eclipse Public License, is expected to be available on multiple platforms.

Globalization, rapidly increasing numbers of devices, virtualization, the cloud, and "bring your own device" make classically organized IP networks difficult to plan and manage. Instead of quarreling, some admins address these problems with a radically new approach: Software-defined networking.